Know Your Enemy: The Flesh Defined | 1 John 2:15-17

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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So this is our, this is the next sermon on the flesh.

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Last week was the flesh introduced and now this week is going to be the flesh defined.

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Now I will say that it's going to take a few, maybe another sermon to fully flesh out the flesh and so, but I've got some really exciting stuff that I want to share with you all and I'm excited to dig into this.

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So well first I wanted to start out by expressing just really so much gratitude for our church and our people and for the plurality of elders that we have in our church.

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Even though there's only two of us right now and I have full confidence that the

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Lord will help us to raise up godly men in our church who rule themselves, their families, their households according to the word of God and to the faithful preaching and teaching and sound doctrine of the word and that he will help us to continue to grow as a church and as a body.

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And even though I scrutinize my sermons very carefully to make sure

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I'm not saying anything wrong, I can still sometimes be unaware of how I come across at times and I can be blissfully ignorant that you know, but I'm grateful for Pastor David who recently rained on my parade.

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I like the description that he used that sometimes when I get a little amped up and pray at the end of the sermon, it might give the impression that I'm yelling at God and so I just wanted to clarify that I'm not yelling at God in anger.

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I'm praying to and petitioning God and excited about it.

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So it's not anger, it's excitement. It's just a little amped up, a little charged up.

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So I just wanted to clarify. And as I've already said before many times, this series builds on all of the previous messages on knowing your enemy and now, like I mentioned, you can go back and listen to all of them.

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They're all there on the sermon archive now. So I encourage you to go back and listen to those. And I wanted to remind us to start out that the unholy trinity of the world, the flesh and the devil are all allies.

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They are allies that conspire to steal, kill and destroy us.

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They try to destroy us. And also that, of course, theology has consequences, even if we don't realize it.

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Theology always has consequences. And it's important to rightly understand the doctrines that the

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Bible teaches us, including the ones on the millennium and on eschatology, like I was covering the previous few weeks.

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Because they do affect many other doctrines, including our enemy, the flesh, which

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I didn't really cover last time, but because it deals with the redemption of our bodies as well.

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So it's important to understand these things consistently and as a whole. And how we can also properly resist the flesh and our other enemies.

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So I also formally introduced to us the last of our mortal enemies, namely the flesh, of course.

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And really important to understand this is that this is one of my main theses, that every single one of us has to face the flesh every single day.

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It's our mortal weakness. Our mortal bodies. It is the ultimate weakness that we all struggle with.

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So we need to be very conscientious and self -aware and equipped to fight back against our flesh.

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Amen. Let's go ahead and turn to 1 John 2, verse 15.

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And we can start out covering this important passage on our enemies. 1

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John 2, verse 15. God's Word says, Do not love the world or the things in the world.

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If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, either or.

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Mutually exclusive. One or the other. For all that is in the world, the desires or lusts of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the

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Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires.

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But whoever does the will of God abides forever. And as I said last

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Sunday, affectation and selfish ambition are manifestations of this.

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They're manifestations of the lust of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life.

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That's what it looks like. Affectation and selfish ambition.

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That's what drives them. And this is also what drives all of them.

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All of the enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil. It drives all three of them.

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And the men he uses like Cain, like Nimrod, like Judas, like the scribes and the

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Pharisees. And also like diatrophies, which

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I didn't really mention last time, but he's a good description of what selfish ambition is and looks like.

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Because according to 3 John, he loves to be first.

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He loves to be first. He loves to be preeminent. He loves to get all the attention among them, among God's people.

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That's an example of selfish ambition. And, you know, this is often because of deficits, because they were rejected like the devil was or like Cain was and so on.

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Or because of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, all of which is a love for the world.

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And it is the world. It is what is in the world. So bear this in mind as we keep going here.

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Remember that the devil tempts us primarily, primarily through our flesh, our weakness, our biggest weakness.

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And our flesh is drawn to affectation and selfish ambition because it can make us feel like we're better than others by tearing them down.

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It's something that we have to be careful with. Now, that being said, we still need to properly define our terms, right?

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So remember that I asked last time for you all to think about this.

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How would you define the flesh? How would you define the flesh and those doctrines that are related to it?

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What else is needed to understand what the flesh is? And I also hope that you consulted

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John Owen's Sin Trilogy to help you answer these questions. Extremely edifying works.

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The Puritans are just outstanding when it comes to this. So I highly commend those works to you by John Owen.

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And I'm going to be quoting them as well throughout the sermon, throughout this series. And even though I haven't quite yet defined what the flesh is, we do now know it better by its ungodly desires, by its fruit, by the works of sin and death like Galatians 5 talks about, explains and warns us against.

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But before we continue to define the flesh, remember that I also asked, do you think there's anything else that is necessary to rightly understand what the flesh is?

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Are there any other building blocks or foundation blocks or other doctrines that we need to know and understand?

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Think about this carefully. This is why I said that it's going to take some time to adequately define the flesh according to scripture because of its relation to other doctrines that we need to understand as well.

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Because, let's see if you got this right, in order to define the flesh properly, we first need to know, understand and define what we are, what man is, right?

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What man is in general. For what is man that you,

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O God, are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the angels and you crown him with all glory and majesty.

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You make him to rule over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the animals of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

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That is Psalms chapter 8, verses 8 through 3. That's a powerful word there from God.

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That is a good overall description of what man is and what his role is in creation.

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Now, our confession states that God himself is a most pure spirit.

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He is spirit, invisible, without body, parts or passions.

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He is without body, parts or passions. This is from chapter 2 of the

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London Baptist Confession, section 1. What this means is that God is simple.

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He is a simple spirit. Now, this does not mean, don't get it twisted, okay?

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This does not mean that he is simple -minded or that he's dumb, okay? That's not what I mean.

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That's not what this means. It means that God does not have any physical or spiritual parts.

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He is a single, simple being. And this is called the doctrine of divine simplicity.

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Simplicity, it's a very ancient doctrine. Goes back to the early church. Because all that is in God is

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God. God is love.

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God is his attributes and he does not change. According to Malachi 3 .6,

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amen? I am the Lord, I change not, ever. He never changes.

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So he does not have a body, parts or passions that can change as well.

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This is what we need to know. This is exactly what we need to know.

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So, but man, on the other hand, does have a body, parts and passions.

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He has all three of those, right? We are subject and we are subject to change. We have body, we have a body, we have parts and we have passions that we need to understand.

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This is what we need to understand and know. That's the question.

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What physical and spiritual parts does man have? And how do they relate to the flesh?

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How many parts do we have? How many parts does man have? Think about this carefully with me.

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Is man dichotomous or trichotomous? Does man have only two parts or three parts?

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That's what dichotomous and trichotomous means. Dichotomous means two, only two parts.

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Trichotomous means three parts. So is man body and spirit or body, soul and spirit or something else?

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Something in addition to that, maybe. Now we have to account for these other parts and pieces in order to solve the puzzle, in order to rightly understand the flesh, right?

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So we need to properly account for and define these terms as well and what is applicable.

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So let's search the scriptures and find out. But first,

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I want us to buckle up and put our seatbelts on and put our thinking caps fully on in the right direction and fully engage our minds today, okay?

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This is gonna be a very engaging message. So pay careful attention because there's some really important ground that I'm gonna cover here.

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So stay with me. Now, many today favor the trichotomous view of man or the three -part view of man and even use it to parallel man as a tripartite being just as God is the

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Trinity, the Triune God. And some popular examples of the trichotomous view come from dispensationalism, which

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I touched on a little bit the last few sermons and it's a theological view that holds to a future millennial reign but it's very different from what we hold to.

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And you can find examples of this view in the

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Schofield Bible and in Lewis Barry Chafer, who were, they're very prominent dispensational resources.

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And in certain early church folks, folks like Apollinarius, which we will cover a little later.

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Now, that being said, now that we have the issues laid before us, what sayeth the scripture?

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Scripture, as you might be aware, actually has much to say about man and what he is.

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But we're gonna turn to a few key texts today, starting with Genesis 2 .7.

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So if you turn there with me right now to Genesis 2 .7, and we'll see what God's word says about that, about man and creation.

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God's word says, then Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

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And so the man became a living soul, a single living soul, a nefesh.

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God made man, in other words, a single living soul from two elements, from the dust of the ground and from his breath of life.

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And note here as well, that the living soul refers to the whole man.

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The whole man, not just a part of him, but man as a whole, as a whole living being.

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Now turn with me to Isaiah 10 .18. As we start to fill in the blanks here,

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Isaiah 10 .18, God's word says, and he,

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God, will bring to an end the glory of his forest. This is referring to the king of Assyria and of his fruit for orchard, both soul and body, soul and body, nefesh and body.

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And it will be as when a sick man wastes away. There you see again, that there's only two parts here.

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Although there's a different emphasis in the distinction that we see in Genesis 2 .7.

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This verse actually uses a literary device called a synecdoche.

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It's a synecdoche where a part of something is used to refer to the whole.

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In this case, in this passage, body is part of the man and soul, nefesh, is the whole man.

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That's the synecdoche. And that's the nefesh from Genesis 2 .7, the living soul referring to the whole man.

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So there we see a little bit more how God's word connects these dots for us.

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Now, potentially soul might refer to the inner part of man as opposed to the outer part of the body.

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Though this is actually more common in the New Testament than the Old Testament, as we'll see. The point here is that there's only two again.

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Now turn with me to Matthew chapter 10, the gospel of Matthew chapter 10 in verse 28.

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Now we're gonna see what the New Testament says about man.

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Matthew chapter 10, verse 28. God's words, the

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Lord says, and do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell, amen.

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So this is, again, two parts to man, body and soul.

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The soul is psuche, psuche, where we get the word psyche or psychology.

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And the body is often referred to as soma, is the Greek word soma, like somatic, which refers to the pertaining to the body.

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So you see here again, two parts, which make up and refer to the whole man.

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And as I alluded earlier, the New Testament tends to use the word soul as the inner part of man, the spiritual part of man as distinct from the body.

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In contrast to the Old Testament usage of the soul as the whole man, as the inner and the outer man, the body and the spirit.

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And as Gordon Clark helpfully explains here, while the Old Testament often uses soul and spirit synonymously, the

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New Testament does as well, but not always, okay? So in the New Testament, soul and spirit are not always synonymous because the

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New Testament introduces a moral distinction between them in that one is sometimes good and the other is sometimes bad, especially when they're used as adjectives.

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Because the word soulish, soulish in the New Testament or psuchikos, which is the adjective form of soul, refers to someone evil.

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It refers to unbelievers who are in fact void of the spirit.

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They are devoid of the spirit of God. That's from Jude 19. And also a similar passage in 1

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Corinthians 2 and 15. Now, on the other hand, spiritual or neomatikos, neoma, which is the adjective form of spirit, it doesn't denote the human spirit, but rather the influence of the

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Holy Spirit, of God's spirit in and on and through believers.

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According to like 1 Corinthians 2 and 15 and also

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Colossians 1 .9, which says, to be filled with the full knowledge of his will,

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God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So that adjective spiritual is talking about God's wisdom,

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God's understanding, God imparting us wisdom and understanding and working in us to understand.

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So now we covered some passages. Now case closed, right? That settles it.

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Man is two parts, amen? Well, maybe not so fast.

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Now here's where it gets a little tricky. It's gonna get a little trickier. There are other passages in scripture, which apparently refer to three or sometimes more parts in man.

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Let's turn now to Luke 10, the gospel of Luke 10 in verse 27.

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Let's dig into the Lord's, to God's word and see what, how to make sense of this.

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Luke, the gospel of Luke 10, verse 27. And he,

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Jesus, answered and said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

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So the gospel here in this passage is actually referring back to, it's alluding to Deuteronomy 6, 5, which similarly says that you shall love

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Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

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So here we have three and four parts. Very interesting. So your heart is cardias, like cardiologist, cardias, that's your heart.

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That's the inner man in scripture, often in scripture. And your soul, the psuche, the psuche, the soul as well.

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And strength, the strength, actually the strength here is dunamis, like dynamite, strength.

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And as Deuteronomy says, might, might. So there's three, four different parts here now that the

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Bible is describing about man. So how do we make sense of this?

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Keep in mind though, that these words refer more to the spiritual part of man rather than the physical body.

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Take note, and take note also that spirit, the spirit is not listed in these verses.

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But it is in the next one. So even though there's three, four elements here, spirit is not one of them.

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So take note of that. A lot of this we have to pick up on the way the

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Bible uses literary devices. Okay, so keep that in mind. As we now go to 1

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Thessalonians 5, verse 23. 1

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Thessalonians 5, verse 23. So in 1

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Thessalonians 5, verse 23, we read. And I'll provide some commentary along the way.

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Okay, now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely.

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Keep note that word, entirely. And may your spirit, your pneuma, as in pneumatology, which is a study of the

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Holy Spirit, pneuma, and soul, psuche, again, psychology, psyche, where we get those words, and body, soma, somatic, relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind, often.

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Be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. So now we see a combo, a different combo of three parts.

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We have spirit, soul, and body.

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And this is where some people get the view, the trichotomous view, that man is spirit, soul, and body.

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So what do we do now? What have we gotten ourselves into? Okay, so let's take a step back here and take note.

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Take a note here that the Bible frequently uses different words or terms to refer to the same thing, often to the exact same things, and even sometimes in the same sentence, often for emphasis or as a parallelism, a parallelism.

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Now, parallelism is very prominent in Hebrew and Middle Eastern poetry, and is very commonly used in both the

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Old and the New Testaments. Now, what is that?

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What is parallelism? Because we need to understand how the Bible uses parallelism so we can interpret it correctly and to derive sound doctrine from it, soundly.

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And it just so happens that a perfect example of this is the doctrine of man, the very thing that we are discussing right now.

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Having a proper understanding of man and his components is a perfect example of why we need to interpret the biblical parallels, the parallelisms, the literary devices correctly to avoid coming to wrong conclusions or to wrong understandings or doctrines.

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Very important part of good principles of interpretation in hermeneutics.

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So let's define our terms, okay? Parallelism is another literary device or figure of speech where two or more elements of a sentence or even a series of sentences have the same grammatical structure, even though the same words might not be used.

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These parallel elements can be used to intensify the rhythm of language or to draw a comparison or to emphasize or to elaborate on an idea.

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Very important to understand. Now, in order to cement this further, let's see some parallelism in action here.

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Turn with me to Matthew 26 in verse 38, the gospel of Matthew chapter 26, verse 38.

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And I know we're covering a lot of scripture and I'm gonna be quoting some good citations from other sources.

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And so don't worry, I'm gonna share the notes online so you'll be able to take a look at them afterwards as well.

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So Matthew 26, verse 38 says, then

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Jesus said to them, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.

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My soul, my psuche, my psuche. Now, let's jump to John 13, the gospel of John chapter 13, verse 21.

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Let's see the parallel here. John 13, verse 21 says, when

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Jesus had said these things, he became troubled in spirit, in spirit, and bore witness and said, truly, truly,

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I say to you, that one of you will betray me. He became troubled in spirit, in nelma, nelma.

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So different words, right? Different words. One is soul, my soul is deeply grieved.

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The other one is he became troubled in spirit, in his spirit, in his nelma.

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So there you see the parallel. There's a parallel there. The Bible uses these terms synonymously, in other words, and it reveals certain parallels.

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Now, if you think that's not good enough,

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I'll raise you one. Let's go back to the Old Testament, to Isaiah chapter 26 and verse nine, where we will find it in the same sentence, okay?

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Very same sentence. Isaiah chapter 26, verse nine. And God's word here says, at night, my soul, my soul longs for you.

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Indeed, my spirit within me seeks you earnestly.

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This is a perfect example of a Hebrew parallelism, a

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Hebrew parallel expression. At night, my soul longs.

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Indeed, my spirit within me seeks earnestly. That is a perfect example of the different words are being used to describe the same sentiment.

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It's for emphasis. It's to emphasize and elaborate and intensify the poetry, the rhythmic language.

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It's actually very beautiful. It's very beautiful, and it makes a deep impression on our minds.

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At night, my soul longs for you. Indeed, my spirit within me seeks you earnestly.

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It's for emphasis. So very important. That's why a lot of times when

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I preach, you'll see me repeating the same word in a text or a verse in several different ways to try to give more perspective or more scope, more color to the picture so that we can get a better grasp of what is being communicated in God's word.

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And that's why I also recommend the Amplified Bible, which is also very helpful because it gives more color and it expands and amplifies the biblical passages sometimes.

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So, here you see that spirit and soul sometimes mean the exact same thing in scripture as the verses above, though not always, okay?

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This is not a hard and fast rule, but it does happen. And sometimes spirits can refer specifically to the inner part of man, while soul can refer to the total man, as we saw earlier in the passages in Genesis and Isaiah in the

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Old Testament. And in the New Testament, spiritual, remember, refers to the

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Holy Spirit's work and influence in believers, while soulish refers to the wicked, to unbelievers.

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So we have to be aware of these things and make proper distinctions to rightly cut and divide the word of truth, amen?

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We need to be careful in how we distinguish and understand these terms, these words, and these doctrines that God is using to explain who we are.

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What shall we say then? What can we conclude therefore? The biblical answer is that man has only two basic parts, a spirit or soul and a body.

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And again, soul often means the whole man. That is very important to understand.

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And that's why even when you see passages like the Gospel of Luke in chapter 10, verse 27, you know, it's talking about loving

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God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your might, all your mind.

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These are all for emphasis. It's a parallelism for emphasis to emphasize that you need to be diligent, committed to God and to loving

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Him completely without reservation, without reservation, amen?

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That's what it's referring to. It's not talking about that we have all these different parts.

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You know, it's very common in our society today to fracture and to, you know, separate the inner parts of man.

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You know, especially modern faculty psychology, you have the ego and the superego and the this, that, and the other.

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And that's just not what the Bible teaches. The Bible doesn't teach those things. The Bible teaches very clearly that man, like it says in Genesis as well,

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God breathed the spirit of man in him by his breath through the dust of the ground, which was his body.

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Two parts, two basic parts. Now, it is, man is therefore dichotomous, two parts, not trichotomous or quadcotomous or quincotomous or anything else, right?

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So I hope we can get that straight, sorted out in our minds. As James also tells us, that just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead, amen?

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That's a parallelism. You have faith, you have the body without the spirit, two parts, and you have faith without works, two parts, a pair, two pairs.

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Same concept, same idea being expressed there. Okay, so now, was this just some intense exercise that wasn't really all that important?

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Is it really that important to know whether man is dichotomous or trichotomous? Does it really matter?

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What's the big deal? Now, I don't want us to misunderstand, okay?

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Do not misunderstand this, beloved, because we cannot arbitrarily or pietistically, which is worse, dismiss this as some irreverent psychology.

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Okay, this has consequences. As I said earlier, having a right understanding of the flesh requires us to have a right understanding of man, of who man is, of what man is and what he is composed of.

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And these doctrines affect many other crucial, vital doctrines as well.

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So we cannot just arbitrarily dismiss these things. We have to wrestle with them and seek to dig deep into the deep things of God, into God's word, amen?

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So I wanna allow our good friend, Gordon Clark, to explain which crucial doctrines this impacts.

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Just a handful, this is just a handful. The nature of Christ is affected because, after all,

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Christ himself is a man, amen? And the early church heretic,

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Apollinarius, remember him, the one we mentioned earlier, he actually used the trichotomous view of man in order to deny the full humanity of Christ.

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Okay, so this has consequences, like I'm saying. Now, what else?

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It also affects the role of the Holy Spirit. For what parts, what faculties does the

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Spirit work in man? Does he work in some parts, in all parts? What parts, what parts are there, right?

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What about the flesh, okay? So therefore, it also affects regeneration and sanctification as well.

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Now, these are very important doctrines. These are not secondary minor doctrines, right? These are serious doctrines, weighty matters, weighty doctrines.

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For what exactly is regenerated and what exactly is sanctified and being sanctified, right?

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What parts? And what about the flesh? How does the flesh fit into all of this?

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How is the flesh itself affected by these things, by these consequences?

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And Clark continues. What we all must learn and keep in mind, and what 99 % of communicant church members, of faithful church attending members, never consider is that Christianity is a system of doctrine.

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Truth forms a system. Doctrines interlock.

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They connect, they form a web, a system. And as J.

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Gresham Machen used to say, most people are saved by a blessed, in consistency.

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Now, if you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch, right? This is hard stuff, but it is what it is.

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It's true. And God's word is emphatically clear about this.

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To have, we just read one of the verses, to have how God instructs us and commands us repeatedly, over and over, to have a full mature knowledge of God, of his word, of his doctrines, of the sound pattern of words, of the hygienic words, of this body of truth, of this faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

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This is what we must know. Not just these isolated passages or doctrines or words in isolation, but how do they make sense as a whole system?

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That is how we put the Bible together. That is how we make sense of the Bible and avoid committing these blunders, these logical, these inconsistent, and even heretical blunders of, like the heretic

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Apollinarius, or this trichotomous view of man, and so on and so forth.

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This is where we get into consequences. And we need to be aware of them by studying carefully and examining, testing carefully how they line up with the scriptures, with all of scriptures, with the whole counsel of God.

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Amen? So let us take heed then to this sobering truth.

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Brothers and sisters, this should not ever be the case amongst us.

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This should not be the case in ourselves or in our church, beloved.

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Okay? That's right. That's right. This must never be the case.

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We have to fight against this. What do we need? We need substance. We need substance.

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Sound, systematic, solid food. Amen? To grow in holiness and to fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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This is all interconnected. That is why we need all of this stuff.

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We need balance and discernment. We need God's means of deliverance and his remedies.

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Remember the six S's, this still applies. Scripture, sound doctrine, the sacraments, self -awareness and self -denial, sage counsel, wise counsel, and spiritual warfare, including intercessory prayer.

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And of course, in order to pray rightly, in order to pray right, God's word even says, you ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, because you don't know what you're talking about, because you don't understand who

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God is, because you don't know what to pray for, because you don't know God's word, because you don't know his doctrine.

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Amen? We need to know the system of truth that the Bible teaches us in order to do everything else right, in order to pray right, in order to live right, and to walk,

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Peripatel, going back to 1 John, in the light and not in the darkness.

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Amen? So, and now that we better understand, now,

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I hope, what man is, we can ask better questions about the flesh.

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Okay? Does the flesh affect the body? Very important.

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Does the flesh affect the spirit of man?

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Does it affect both, the whole man? Or does it affect neither?

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Probably not, right? Because we already saw, we already read several passages, especially last week, how the flesh is very closely tied to the body, especially.

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Now, given this understanding of what man is, dichotomous, body and spirit, right?

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What then is the flesh? What is it? What does it affect? But also, what is it?

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Is the flesh the body? Is the flesh the body? Or is it the spirit?

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Or is it both, maybe? Or is it neither?

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So, I wanna leave you,

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I don't wanna leave you totally, you know, with a cliffhanger, right? I don't wanna completely leave you in the dark.

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I know I've kind of, it's taken me some time to lay this out, but I hope you're starting to understand better why it's important to cover the basics.

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Some things just take time to explain, amen? So, but I'll leave you with this.

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And I'm gonna expound on this more carefully so that we can connect the dots and to really build what we've already established.

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The flesh, often in scripture, primarily refers to the physical body, okay?

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The physical body, but not exclusively, not necessarily exclusively.

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It does also affect our senses especially because of the way our bodies interact with our spirit.

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So there is a connection there that we need to understand, okay? And it's gonna take some time to unfold and unpack those things, okay?

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So, in conclusion, then think on these things.

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Think on these things with your spirit, right? Not your spirit and your soul, because that's the same thing.

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We know that now. According to like Philippians 4, 8 says, and as God's word says, meditate on these things for the next sermon.

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And don't forget to consult our excellent friend, brother and Puritan, John Owen.

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His works on the mortification of sin, on temptation and on the nature prevalency of indwelling sin are just outstanding.

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Highly commend those works to you. You can get them free online. You can order them for free online from Chapel Library.

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Amen, so with that said, let's go ahead and close out with a word of prayer.

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Our precious gracious Lord and heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this beautiful Lord's day.

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We ask that you would bless our time together, Lord, that you would bless the preaching of your word, that you would help me,

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Father, to be faithful and accurate in the truth of your word and to have the knowledge and the understanding to preach and to expound and to build the system of doctrine,

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Father, that you have laid out for us in your word. Help me and help us,

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Father, to unpack your word and to systematize it, to develop it and to understand it as a whole, as the whole counsel of God, as you have revealed to us,

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Lord, and as you have equipped us to do so as your people. And even though when we lack understanding, all we have to do is ask you because you are so gracious and beneficent to us,

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Lord, and are willing to give us all wisdom and to give us full knowledge. All of us, not just pastors and not just theologians, but all of us, a mature knowledge, as your word says in Colossians, a full knowledge, as 2

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Peter says, a full, mature understanding of Christ and your word, which is everything given to us through knowledge of him for faith and life and godliness.

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And we thank you, Father. We ask that you would help us to apply these things, to learn and to grow in these things, in our body and our spirit.

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And we ask this in Jesus' almighty name, amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorne Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Ephraim on the radio and Thorne Crown Network podcast, please contact us at thornecrownministries .com.